First Drafts

My muse just took me on a wild ride, and here’s the first draft. Done.

I’ve been writing books for many years. None ever caught me quite like this. And I must apologize to my followers for being absent awhile from this blog. I know. I know. You’re supposed to balance things out. Divide your time between writing and blogging and Facebook and marketing and all the rest. People sometimes remark about my discipline as a writer that helps me put out a lot of pages in a short amount of time. It’s not discipline, folks. It’s obsession. And this time, maybe more.

I blogged earlier about the visit of my muse, who began flooding me with ideas for this one in mid-December. I never really got away from it. I piled up notes and finally got them organized, ready to start the first draft in mid-February. I finished this draft March 22. In the last few days I gave it the first readings, one on the computer, one on paper. The photo above shows the first cleaned-up version on paper–not the final draft by any means. But it’s finally something I can hold in my hands.

Did I tell you the story of her name? My muse? I believe I alluded to it. In one post I had talked about changing the name of my character and how that ignited the inspiration for this historical novel of the Greek isle of Crete. I call the character Talia, and when I looked online for the meaning of that name I came up with several meanings like to blossom or bloom. Ah! Did she bloom! But, as I mentioned in my most recent post, one day I checked again for the name’s meaning, a different website. On this new website I learned that Thalia (an alternate spelling) is one of the nine Greek muses. Okay! That did set me back in my chair.

Is she sending me all this? It feels as if the story has come from a source outside myself. And the experience has been intense. I’ve been in this world, caught up in the joys and traumas and fiery conflicts and triumphs and pains, since the middle of December. A fantastic ride.

This is a book in my series from the Minoan world. One reason I could write an epic historical novel so quickly is that most of the research was already done for the earlier books, my scenario already developed. I just had to keep track of the generations and remain consistent–not always easy, but easier than the years of research that went into the first.

And Thalia isn’t done. Even before I finished this book, she started sending scenes for a new one. I’ll get the notes down, but I’m asking her for a brief rest.

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It appears to be a time for beginnings. My first daffodil of the season opened up. And I began writing my first scenes for the new novel. I love daffodils because they give me hope of life emerging again in the spring. Now my new book is taking life.

After receiving input from my muse for many weeks, I finally put it all into some semblance of order with an outline. From that I write.

By the way, I found an interesting tidbit of information a short time ago. As mentioned in my last post, all this recent input from my muse started when I changed the name of the protagonist for this new book, which is set in ancient times on the Greek isle of Crete. I usually like to know what the names of my characters mean. It affects my feelings about them. There are many sites you can google for your baby names and some of those offer meanings. I had clicked a few sites already on the new name for the protagonist, but went back to check again and came up with a new site.

This new site told me the name I had chosen, with a slight spelling variation, was the name of one of the nine Greek muses. I did sit back in my seat suddenly, reading that. Who knew? No wonder she’s been sending me material. 🙂

Anyway, I’ve enjoyed the whole process, except for some short nights of sleep. Now I’m thrilled to be writing.

I know some writers claim you have to write every day. It doesn’t really work that way for me. I see each book as a project with different phases, several of which involve writing in some sense–from note taking to revisions. But the most intense phase, the part where I step into the world of my characters and live it through them, is the first rough draft. That’s the real writing part to me. It’s where I am now. And loving it.

Cheers!

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